A recent study has revealed that 79 percent of 2,000 North American developers believe that eSports is a “long-term, sustainable business.” The Game Developers Conference (GDC) polled these developers in order to produce the third annual State of the Industry Survey. The 2,000 developers in question previously attended GDC 2014, and the results of the survey’s poll is hoped to gain a glimpse at what might be trending within the games industry ahead of GDC 2015 in March.
According to said results, “more than one in 10 developers” say they’re already building an eSports game. Specifically, 12 percent of the 2,000 participants confirmed that they are working on games with competitive, skill-based multiplier. While the developers who took part in the survey were not named, one participant commented that the streaming platform Twitch TV has made “competitions very accessible,” adding that high-profile events like Evo are becoming more popular as a result.
“Creating a game as an eSport causes it to become a hobby and an interest outside the act of playing it. This increased engagement is one way of allowing a game to become part of a player’s life in ways that [don’t] require them to always be investing their time into playing it,” another developer wrote another.
Also in the State of the Industry Survey, over 40 percent of developers saw their profits rise in 2014 compared to 2013. Their staff have also expanded between that amount of time as well. 15 percent, on the other hand, state that they have lost staff during 2014, while one percent said their studio closed down. 38 percent added that their staff count has remained unchanged.
29 percent said they made the majority of their profits from directs sales, either to consumers or via digital distribution, while 21 percent said their profits were made primarily from micro-transactions. You can read more on GDC’s State of the Industry Survey via the source link below.
[ Source: Gamasutra ]